Featured News

Welcome to DesignSherpa, a revolutionary internet marketing service for the home design and remodeling industry from Network Communications, Inc., the parent company of the country’s largest group of regional home design media brands including New England Home, Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles, At Home in Arkansas, Seattle Homes & Lifestyles, Kansas City Home & Garden, Mountain Living, St. Louis Homes & Lifestyles, Colorado Homes & Lifestyles and more.

DesignSherpa provides a turn key solution to building and managing a social media marketing program for design professionals, retailers, showrooms, and luxury home service providers.  DesignSherpa takes the risk and complexity out of social media marketing, creating a new kind of Internet Marketing presence for your home design business. We will improve your visibility on Google, increase your web traffic, enhance your connection with consumers and other design professionals, and turbo-charge your referral network.

The explosion of social media tools and networks, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, create a unique opportunity for design professionals, retailers, showrooms, and other luxury home design businesses to get active on the web, by providing interesting content relevant to consumers and the  trade who are seeking ideas or resources while they plan enhanced residential living environments.  Social media tools help you get involved in the process that starts with inspiration and culminates in selecting  products and resources, creating an active and engaged online community around your business when your prospects are most active.

Network Communications and its home design media brands recognize the incredible potential of social media marketing to improve your bottom line.  We also understand the time and technology challenges that social media marketing presents to busy design professionals.

DesignSherpa is a monthly subscription service that provides a customized turn-key solution to create active, engaged and effective virtual networks of prospects and influential members of the trade in your market..

Our numerous luxury home magazine professionals from Atlanta to Seattle bring their unique skills in content creation and management, as well as knowledge of social media networks to the implementation of DesignSherpa.

Our teams are all social-media certified. Every member has gone through a detailed month-long training program with Domus Consulting to educate them about the power of social media networks and to give them insight and experience in developing effective and influential networks.  Our teams submitted themselves to several additional months of training in creating and sharing content that drives engagement around their magazine brands and market activity and growth in their own social networks.  They can now share their experiences and help you start to harness the power of social media with benefits best appreciated by getting active with a well thought out complete social media strategy and system.

To learn more about this powerful service, please visit the following links:

About DesignSherpa

About Home Design and Network Communications, Inc .

Case Study Featured

In a recent post at Dan McCarthy’s Viralhousingfix blog there was an interesting ground level story about a local cycling/spin studio operator’s view on his own experiences with social media as a tool for expanding his business.  I happen to know the operator, and he is a practical smart thinker that never overstates matters or sugar coats his experiences.

The operator, Bill Pryor of Spynergy Cycling Studio (full disclosure: Bill is an old media hand and good friend, and we have used his expertise to help us develop our DigitalSherpa social media services) had this to say about social media as tool for a small businesses like his:

First, all this is still exploratory and the best practices are far from well defined —– but it doesn’t take much time (or money) to explore and there is more than enough anecdotal stuff happening to make me feel it is worth it. Second not ALL my customers are into this stuff……not even MOST of my customers and prospects are into it. But a small, passionate and fast growing group ARE into this. And those people are disproportionately important because they are those key “connectors” or “engagers” or whatever it was that Malcom Gladwell called them in Tipping Point. The ones who ARE into social media often can turn into obsessive evangelists for your business. Evangelists armed with amazing networking tools.

Check out the post at Viralhousingfix.com to see some examples of how some of Bill’s social media savvy customers have helped him promote his local fitness business.  Also, read this post on local businesses and social media .  If you are interested in checking in on Bill’s blogging approach for Spynergy, find it here at spynergy.squarespace.com/blog .  It is just another example of how social media can be an inexpensive but powerful boost for small businesses.

Construction How To research

I remember being home from grade school sick and getting to watch Bob Ross on public television. In case you are a younger member of generation Y and you are not familiar, Bob Ross was a painter who specialized in landscapes and fan brushes. He had this ability to make art look easy. He would start with basic techniques while teaching about shading and highlights and before you knew it, the hour was up and he had created another riveting nature-focused awe inspiring piece of art.

I think interior designers should have that same grace and artful hand. Only instead of “little trees” and fan brushes, we focus on interiors using (most likely) Sharpie markers. However, with the influx of technology, are we losing a bit of the hand-drawn quality of solid interiors work? Are we instead doing the right thing for the client and providing more realistic computer rendered images? Are we losing an art form or moving forward with technology?

I believe this has been a long time battle between designers and especially design educators. There are many design educators out there (institutions and individuals) that have the mentality that you have to learn the basics (hand drafting and rendering) before moving onto more advance methods of visual communication. I have to agree. “Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun!” But, as we move forward daily with technology, is there really a chance that as an industry, we will really have to revert to hand drawing and rendering? Probably not, but as one of my associates once put it to me, “There is nothing more impressive or awesome than to see a talented designer just grab a pen and be able to sketch ideas right in front of the client.”

So with this in mind, I think it is safe to say that hand drawing skills are impressive and needed. Even though as an industry we may never actually need to do much by hand, it is nice to know that you can rely on your basic skills. Plus, what are you going to do if you are in front of a client and your laptop dies??

Color Green Design Paint interior design

Looking for a fun, inexpensive way to brighten up your room to this year’s latest trends? Have you considered taking one of the key walls in your room and painting it a bright trendy color? Such as the wall that’s immediately in front of you when you walk into the room. Do you have a small angled wall that your fireplace is on? Or what about the wall your beds headboard sits against?

I recommend staying away from walls with lots of windows because the wall becomes broken up and won’t have the full effect as a solid wall with a pop of color! Painting a wall is a great way to pop that standard beige sofa everyone seems to have. Try this year’s bright plum purple, fuchsia, lime green or light green/blue trends! Throw pillows that incorporate these colors will also add an additional pop of color to the room. If you are keeping the rest of your walls a neutral color, try finding some wall art prints or oil paintings that incorporate these bright colors. Why not add a rug to pull it all together?

While taking on this fun adventure, why not learn a little bit more about what the paint companies are doing to follow the environmental trend. A majority of the paint companies offer low VOC paints or no VOC paints. VOC’s are volatile organic compounds that may cause some types of cancer when released into the air. Another benefit of using this paint is that your house will smell very little if at all like paint! Some of the paint companies even offer paints that are a primer and paint color in one! My personal favorite would be Benjamin Moore’s AURA paint line.

I would recommend that you save the time and try out this new paint technology. To continue the environmental trend, remember to recycle those plastic paint tray liners. Cloth tarps and standard paint brushes are a great investment because you will be able to reuse them again next time. Now that’s what I call “green”!

Good Luck and I hope you enjoy your new trendy colored inspired room!